The way forward for Afghanistan

The international community should agree that Afghanistan is best restored as a “neutral” state free of foreign military presence. Source: Reuters

The accent should be on the restoration of the country’s sovereignty and independence with the international community playing a future role by assisting that country to get on to its feet.

Geopolitics has throughout been a template
of the three-decade old war in Afghanistan. There were times of high tide and
low tide. If the so-called ‘Afghan jihad’ of the 1980s was a high noon when
Afghanistan became the epicentre of the Cold War, the geopolitical content
ebbed during the Mujahideen era that followed but then, only to pick up a
decade later with the United States’ intervention in Afghanistan in 2001.

All the same, the US had a free hand
through the past decade to conduct the war as it pleased. Regional powers such
as Russia, China and Iran were, arguably, net beneficiaries of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s war for keeping the terrorist forces at bay.
Despite their robust countermoves against the US’s ‘containment strategy’
towards them, they sidestepped Afghanistan as a theatre of contestation
although the US and NATO’s military presence in such a highly strategic country
would have profound implications for the geopolitics of the region.

Unsurprisingly, geopolitics took a back seat
during the past decade. However, as a critical turning point approaches with
the projected withdrawal of the troops belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation [NATO] and the United States from Afghanistan by end-2014, we see
a dramatic surge of geopolitics. Suffice to say, there is a growing likelihood
that the big-power rivalries being played out on global scale could become a
destabilizing factor in the overall Afghan situation, which is delicately
poised at present.

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The core of the problem lies in the United
States’ intention to establish long-term military bases in Afghanistan. This
agenda was unfolding steadily over time, which is evident from the fact that
the US has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars to renovate and
refurbish select military bases to bring them on par with the standards and
amenities provided for American troops stationed abroad. The US of course never
acknowledged that such a project was unfolding, which added to the strategic
ambiguity regarding its future intentions.

Therefore, what we have at the end of the
day is a manifest keenness to end the US’ “combat role” but an agenda to occupy
Afghanistan on a long-term basis. The US has taken a surreptitious course by
pretending that the government in Kabul represents a sovereign state and the
conclusion of a status of forces agreement is a purely bilateral matter between
the two governments. This is a total fallacy, since Afghanistan is a highly
fragmented country and no Afghan group – including the government in Kabul –
can today claim to genuinely reflect the will of the Afghan people today.
Ironically, Washington has been the most vociferous quarter to allege that the
government headed by Hamid Karzai rests on a highly disputable mandate secured
through a patently rigged election in 2009 (which was “won” solely through the
last-minute acquiescence by the US government on the understanding that Karzai
will relinquish power in 2014.)

The Taliban and many other sections of
Afghan opinion oppose the establishment of the US military bases. The
prevailing mood in the country is also “anti-American” and Afghan people always
resisted foreign occupation. On the other hand, the prospect of the
establishment of US military bases in Afghanistan rings alarm bells in many
regional capitals. Besides, the US’ clandestine efforts to have direct dealings
with the Taliban to strike a secret “deal” also raises misgivings in the
region, given Washington’s abysmal record of using the forces of political
Islam as instruments of its regional strategies – be it in Libya, Egypt or
Syria.

The prerequisite of a durable solution to the
Afghan problem is two-fold. First the international community should agree that
Afghanistan is best restored as a “neutral” state free of foreign military
presence. Second, emanating from the above, a truly intra-Afghan peace process
needs to be initiated under the auspices of the United Nations. In sum, the
accent should be on the restoration of Afghanistan’s sovereignty and
independence with the international community playing a future role by
assisting that country to get on to its feet after the debilitating civil war,
which, by the way, really began in 1974 with the overthrow of King Zahir Shah.